Royal National Theatre of Great Britain – Great Performanceshttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf
The best in the performing arts from across America.Thu, 08 Dec 2016 20:29:13 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.1 Interview: Trevor Nunn, Directorhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/rodgers-hammersteins-oklahoma-interview-trevor-nunn-director/321/
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]]>Sir Trevor Nunn, aged 63, directed “Oklahoma!” for the National Theatre in London in 1998 and filmed this screen adaptation before the production moved to the West End the following year. The revival opened on Broadway in March 2002. Sir Trevor was artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company for 18 years (1968-1986) and artistic director of the National Theatre for five years (1997-2002). He has directed many musicals and operas, including the world premieres of “Cats,” “Starlight Express,” “Les Misérables,” “Sunset Boulevard,” and acclaimed revivals of “Porgy and Bess,” “South Pacific,” and “My Fair Lady.”

GREAT PERFORMANCES: Why did you choose to do “Oklahoma!”?

Trevor Nunn: Because I love any work that involves, in one way or another, the creation of a community. I love pieces that have a strong social context, a foreground and a background, and I love to have as many stories as possible. I saw “Oklahoma!” again entirely because of my children. I watched the old film over their shoulders and saw how this wonderful score had elements of hymnal and folk music, Aaron Copland, as well as romantic song. And I realized that a musical about people from the sticks who were alive 70 years ago must have seemed such a doomed thing for Rodgers and Hammerstein to take on. Yet, this was the musical that changed everything, mainly because Hammerstein insisted on writing the words, that is, book and lyrics, before Rodgers wrote any music. So the music had to serve the drama of the musical, if you like.

GP: You have a live audience in the film. How does that work?

TN: We filmed a performance with an audience, and through the audience, and then filmed in a studio for just under two weeks which, when you’re dealing with choreography and “playback” — which is actors singing in the studio with prerecorded orchestra and voices — is not all that long a time! But I had filmed in a similar way when I directed “The Comedy of Errors,” which had musical sections, and “Porgy and Bess,” with the same producer, Richard Price, so I knew what was needed.

GP: What are the gains and the losses of filming a theater production?

TN: The most immediate and important gain is reaching such a huge audience. And on film, you can get the detail and intensity of a performance absolutely clear. You can also see what’s going on behind the actors’ eyes, whether they’re speaking or singing, and it’s wonderful to know that all the detailed work in rehearsal is going to survive on film. I love the gain of the constant variety of points of view and angles. The choreographic numbers refresh themselves in that way. The main loss is the reality of people singing for you on the night, the ingredient of stamina in the performance, and the possibility, of course, that something could always go wrong.

GP: Hugh Jackman is well known now from the X-MEN movies and his star turn on Broadway in “The Boy from Oz,” and has been voted one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world by PEOPLE magazine. But he was completely unknown when you cast him as Curly.

TN: I cast him first as Joe Gillis in the Australian production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard.” I always ask people at musical auditions to do an acting piece as well. He did a speech of Henry V’s, which is very, very unusual … and when he came to audition for Curly, he did a bravura bit of Hotspur [from “Henry IV”], a very good idea for Curly! Hugh has a great quality of revelation and also a purity of spirit, which can make that connection with the great outside landscape of “Oklahoma!” He has that sort of soul.

GP: Shuler Hensley, too, is marvelous as Jud. He won an Olivier Award for his performance in London, but is even less well known than Hugh Jackman was!

TN: Shuler is one of those incredibly talented Americans who couldn’t get work in America, so he found employment in Germany in American musicals. He married an English girl and came to a chorus audition in London. He was a big guy who could dance a bit, who might have been one of the farmhands. After a little work together, it was clear he was Jud. Look no further. He’s dynamite.

GP: How important was your work with the choreographer Susan Stroman?

TN: Nothing I did was without her. We spent most of our time in each other’s rehearsals. I don’t like working with people who guard their own territory. All the best work is done in collaboration. And it was always an idea we shared that we should have principals who could dance the dream ballet so that it wasn’t, as it is usually is, a separate entity performed by dancers you never see again. For the first time, the ballet is a further exploration of the characters themselves, and we couldn’t have done it without Josefina Gabrielle as Laurey. She had been a principal dancer with the National Ballet of Portugal. She also sings like a bird and is a very fine actress.

GP: What next: is it Shakespeare or musical theater, finally, for you?

TN: It is both. I have never, ever, made a categorical differentiation between the two. I’m longing to do “West Side Story” one day, and I’m talking to Ian McKellen about “King Lear.” I would give anything to do both. Meanwhile, I’m planning the new Lloyd Webber, “The Woman in White,” for London next year. I’m doing a Shakespeare, a workshop of a new play towards a production, television, I’m talking about doing a film, I’m doing an opera in Salzburg … so I’m having a great time. And “Oklahoma!” was a real high point.

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About the Writers

Michael Coveney is the theater critic for the DAILY MAIL in London. He has written books about the Glasgow Citizens Theatre, the actress Dame Maggie Smith, the film director Mike Leigh, the actor Sir Robert Stephens, and now Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber. His critically acclaimed book about the composer, CATS ON A CHANDELIER, was published in London in 1999 and draws on extensive conversations with Lloyd Webber, as well as with many of his colleagues, friends, and family. An updated paperback version of the book, THE ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER STORY, was published in the summer of 2000.

Thomas Hischak is the author of 13 books on theater, film, and Tin Pan Alley, including THE OXFORD COMPANION TO AMERICAN THEATRE (Oxford University Press), THROUGH THE SCREEN DOOR: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BROADWAY MUSICAL WHEN IT WENT TO HOLLYWOOD (Scarecrow Press), THE TIN PAN ALLEY SONG ENCYCLOPEDIA (Greenwood Press), BOY LOSES GIRL: BROADWAY’S LIBRETTISTS (Scarecrow Press), and WORD CRAZY: BROADWAY LYRICISTS FROM COHAN TO SONDHEIM (Praeger Press). He is Professor of Theatre at the State University of New York College at Cortland and the author of 18 published plays.

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]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/rodgers-hammersteins-oklahoma-musical-selections/115/feed/5 Essay: A Record of a Performancehttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/rodgers-hammersteins-oklahoma-essay-a-record-of-a-performance/114/
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This new film of “Oklahoma!” preserves all the freshness and vitality of the original staging at London’s Royal National Theatre, the evocative designs of Anthony Ward, and the stunning choreography of Broadway’s own Susan Stroman, who is also responsible for the choreography in the smash hit musical version of “The Producers.”

Filming musicals, of course, is always difficult. In this instance, Trevor Nunn and his co-director, Chris Hunt, opted for preserving the stage setting and, indeed, the atmosphere in the Olivier auditorium in the National itself. We zoom into the audience as the overture strikes up, and many of the musical numbers and characters’ exits are followed by “live” applause and a cutaway panning shot of the auditorium, with its mauve seats, concrete interior, and mass of palpably enthusiastic, casually dressed theatergoers.

We can see the revolving stage go around. We know that the backdrop is painted blue and the Oklahoma landscape a sandy orange. And the scene changes are clearly visible, as when the action moves from the Claremore train station to the high cornfields, where we first meet the Persian peddler, Ali Hakim, as he trundles on with his wagon of ribbons and bibelots with Ado Annie in tow.

“Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’,” that famous opening number, with Aunt Eller churning butter and the irrepressible cowboy Curly appearing at the farmhouse in his carefree manner, dressed in a cotton shirt and leather pants, is one of the most gorgeous and most simple in musical theater history. Hugh Jackman, who plays Curly with such dynamic charm and appeal, says that the lyrics of that first song have nice big vowels, making it easy to open his mouth and let rip without feeling he has to strain for effect.

All the same, this film is very much a record of a performance, without any false attempt to “make a film,” except where the camera can close right in on the actors’ expressions or take a sideways view of the stage action. We therefore have a double bonus of seeing a great theater show without feeling we are watching it through a static frame. A lot of “Oklahoma!” is about dream and pretense, so when Curly boasts that he will take Laurey to the box social in a “surrey with the fringe on top,” he does so while sitting astride a rusty old agricultural contraption. The ambition is rooted in the everyday life on a farm, the simplicity of theater.

This approach preserves the theatrical architecture of the musical in all its glory, with the swirling choreography executed in a seemingly confined space, but explosively inventive nonetheless. And Oscar Hammerstein’s libretto, loyally based on the 1931 play “Green Grow the Lilacs” by Lynn Riggs, is revealed as a masterpiece of construction, every scene flowing to the next and through the matchless score of Richard Rodgers. The composer’s daughter, Mary Rodgers, is on record with her view of Trevor Nunn’s version: “It is a better production than the original. And I’m one of the few people who saw the original.”

The main narrative strand concerns Laurey’s choice of partner for the social. Will she go with Curly, the cowboy, or with the moody loner Jud Fry, the hired farmhand? That choice, and indeed that rivalry, between the cattle rancher and the farming community — expressed in the rousing Act II opener, “The Farmer and the Cowman (Should Be Friends)” — reflects what Nunn calls “the historical inevitability” of the musical and indeed what actually happened once this Indian territory became a new state in the Union. The contest was refined into pure theater at the end of Act I, when a ballet sequence — staged in the 1943 premiere by the legendary Agnes de Mille — takes us into the interior emotional world of courtship, seduction, and obsession in the love triangle.

Above all, though, “Oklahoma!” is about a new dawn for a new love, a new school, a new frontier, and a new state. This bursting sense of change is what characterizes the Nunn revival, and not even the slight pall cast on the proceedings by the ugly scenes following the wedding of Curly and Laurey can spoil the overall mood. A new society must discover how best to exercise the laws of justice, and the homely, conciliatory wisdom of Maureen Lipman’s Aunt Eller will remain a crucial ingredient.

On Broadway three years ago, the entrance to the Gershwin Theatre was garlanded with a great banner quoting the title song: “We know we belong to the land, and the land we belong to is grand.” When the camera pans along the line of actors at Curly and Laurey’s wedding feast and the female voices rise in melodic descant, we are witnessing the birth of a nation, no less.

This is the power and the glory of this revival of “Oklahoma!,” and it remains as potent a statement in a world that has changed in so many ways as when the show gave so much joy to so many people on both sides of the Atlantic during and after the Second World War.

Americans still have plenty to be proud of, and “Oklahoma!” reminds them why.

Still “doin’ fine” after 60 years, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s landmark American musical “Oklahoma!” is reborn in this film version of the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain’s award-winning production. Directed by Trevor Nunn and choreographed by Susan Stroman, it set box office records during its run in London, and again on Broadway, with critics and audiences alike captivated by its fresh new take on a venerable classic. Luckily for television audiences, the magic of the original London cast was captured in a deluxe film adaptation just prior to the show’s move from the RNT to the West End; it includes a sensational, star-making performance by X-Man Hugh Jackman as Curly. Also featured are original cast members Josefina Gabrielle as Laurey, Maureen Lipman (THE PIANIST) as Aunt Eller, and 2002 Best Supporting Actor Tony winner Shuler Hensley as the menacing yet hauntingly sympathetic Jud Fry.

Special funding for this program was provided by Daimler-Chrysler and the Irene Diamond Fund.